Tammy Duckworth expecting 2nd child; would be 1st to give birth while serving in Senate

Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., center, greets supporters on June 21, 2017, after speaking at a health care rally at the west front lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Duckworth is expecting her second child, she announced Tuesday.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., center, greets supporters on June 21, 2017, after speaking at a health care rally at the west front lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Duckworth is expecting her second child, she announced Tuesday. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Duckworth will turn 50 in March. She and her husband, Bryan Bowlsbey, have a daughter, Abigail O'kalani Bowlsbey, who was born in November 2014. Their second child, a girl, is due in April.

“It’s a terrible thing, but I’m listed as a geriatric mother,” she said with a laugh. “It’s called a geriatric pregnancy on all of my medical charts. I don’t let that bother me though. I think 50-year-old moms are the new 40-year-old moms.”

Duckworth will be the first woman to give birth while serving in the U.S. Senate, though not the first to do so while serving in Congress.

Kirsten Gillibrand gave birth to a son in 2008, while serving as a U.S. representative for New York’s 20th Congressional District. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2009.

Duckworth, herself, had her first child while she was serving in the U.S. House.

“I feel great,” she said. “I was just able to go on a congressional delegation to Korea and Japan. I went up to the (Demilitarized Zone) and had lots of good meetings about the threat of war with North Korea and came home to a major policy speech at Georgetown (University) on North Korea and nuclearization and went right into this (government) shutdown fight.

Duckworth lost both legs in 2004 during the Iraq War when the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 after representing Illinois’ 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms. She also served as assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In September, Duckworth wrote an op-ed for Cosmopolitan, advocating for more lactation rooms in airports and outlining the bipartisan legislation she introduced to make that happen. I asked her whether parenting changes the way she legislates.

“It does shape the way I represent the people of Illinois and the nation,” she said. “I think back to when I was deployed to Iraq and what it was like for people to leave their children and babies. I know women who left 8-week-old infants. This trip to Japan and Korea was seven days, and it’s the longest I’ve been away from my daughter, and it was horrible.

“Abigail just turned 3, and we’re talking about preschool,” she continued. “I think about people who don’t have options for preschool. All of these things start to really change my priorities and my focus. I’ve always been supportive of all these issues, but I live them every day now. It’s very humbling.”

I asked her how it will feel to be the first woman to give birth while serving in the U.S. Senate.

“Well, it’s about damn time,” she said. “I can’t believe it took until 2018. It says something about the inequality of representation that exists in our country.

“Men have been having children while they’ve been in office,” she said. “I hope if anything comes out of the Women’s March, it’s that we get more and more women running for office. It would be good to have some company here.”